Week 7 Peer Postings

In week 7 one of the assignments is to view 2 of our peer/classmates postings and then leave a comment on it. The first blog title that caught my attention was "Create Yourself". I decided to see what the blog was about. You can view my comment.

For my second one I chose a story in 5 photos. I had some much fun working on this project and I enjoy looking at other finished stories. This has some very pretty pictures of the different seasons.

Digital Drugs ?

I know I am a beginner when it comes to the technology of today, but I never thought I would hear the term digital drugs. I was shocked when this aired on the 6 p.m. news today. I can not believe that someone actually took the time to figure out what frequency and sound levels would affect the brain in this matter. I learned something tonight. I am glad that Mustang Schools took the initiative to warn parents in their school district. I was also glad to see that some of the student interviewed had told their friends this was not safe and chose not to download the music to their mp3 players. This is also scary. My 13 year old niece, or other children for that matter, could download these songs innocently and end up seriously hurt after listening to it. I wonder where this topic would fit into digital citizenship?

Wiki's are for more than just research

I was asked to watch a video from the K12 Online Conference 2009. This video has to do with the use of Wiki's and how to use them for collaborative learning. I was amazed at how many uses Wiki's have besides for research. I had no idea it has so many great uses. I learned a lot and had a whole new world of wiki opened up for me. The video is Parallel Play or Collaboration-Leveraging the Wiki Platform for High Quality Work. I thought that it was a great idea for the presenter, Paula White, to also set up and include a Wiki with the information for the video also.
I am glad she did because it gives me a reference point as I learn and use Wiki's.



The other information I took away was that students, of any age, have to want to be connected and engage with others. We are more likely to accomplish this if we are passionate about or interested in something. This can be motivation for work outside and inside the classroom. Paula talks about getting students to do task that she would not normally have been able to and sometimes the students take the initiative to do the task ahead of time.

I can remember when the phone was the only way to interact and work together. I had no idea that collaboration could take place (on such a global level) through the use of a Wiki. Wiki's also allow collaboration to happen 24 hours a day. Wiki's can be used when it is the most convenient for the user.

I feel that Wiki's are a valuable to for educators. I would like to use them when I am teaching. I am already thinking of ways that a wiki would work for the parents of my students. I would also provide an avenue for interacting with each other and other parents who have students in my class. The possibilities for Wiki's are endless.

Can Collaboration and Merit Based Pay co-exist in the Education field?

I have been watching one of the videos for an assignment in week 7 of my technology 4 teachers class. I am still behind seeing as how the class is finishing up week 8 & starting week 9 on Wed. I was learning about wiki's and collaborative learning.

I live in Oklahoma. Earlier today, I was watching one of the new channels and they were talking about instituting merit based pay for teachers. While watching the video I learned that using technology for our passions increase knowledge and self-directed learning. I decided to take a chance and post my question to see what my peers thoughts would be.

Everything we are learning in college has to do with collaboration and using our peers as resources. I am know wondering how collaboration is going to exist and work if Oklahoma does instate merit based pay. Will collaboration die out? If your ideas are ,what your pay is based on, are you going to want to share your really neat discoveries and idea with fellow teachers? I am not sure that collaborate would exist as freely and available as it does in our non-merit based pay world today.

What do you think?

We're off to see the wizard

As part of our homework assignment, for week 6, were were asked to watch a video at K12. I watched the Wizard of Apps. I thought parts of this were really cute. Although, I thought all of the information provided was good. I loved the wizard of apps play that was mixed in with the information sections. I was blown away by how well they had changed the words, from the original songs, to match the their subject matter. It was cool. These students did a great job.

The main theme seemed to be digital citizenship. There is information shared on how to leave a good digital footprints and what types of technology is available to help us achieve this. There are several websites that are shared to help teachers help their students learn about digital citizenship and incorporate it into their learning experience. Information is provided to help all users to be safe users of technology and respect all copyright laws.

As a future teacher, it is import to me that I know how to protect myself and my students, when it comes to using the Internet and technology in my classroom. The more I learn, in my technology 4 teachers class, the more I keep having the same question. Is there any way to make sure our students are 100% safe when incorporating technology into lessons and my classroom. The last thing I want to happen, or find out about is that one of my students got hurt and there was a connection to the technology used in my classroom. This video gave great websites for this and I have added some of them to my Diigo account for future referencing.






While watching the video, I noticed that I had a hard time reading some of the information that was on the screen from the Internet. I was a little disappointed in that because I wanted to read some of the information shared. When I finished watching the video , I noticed that there was also a link for a slide show of the Wizard of Apps. I went to check it out and was glad that I did. I could read all the information that was hard to read from the video.

Wizard of Apps

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Part of this assignment is to go to one of the websites that Joyce mentions in the video. I decided to go to one of them that I had wrote down to add to my Diigo account. In the video, it talks about a website that you can go to to check on the digital footprint an individual leaves. It is a people search website. I found this intriguing and decided to check myself out. I did not figure that I would find any digital footprints. Surprise, I found my blog listed in two different places. I thought it was kind of strange that it was one of my post and not my actual blog location. It brings a new perspective when you see your actual digital footprint.

Digital Citizenship is a topic that is going to continue to grow as we continue to grow in technology. I feel that as teachers we should be educated on this subject. We are going to have to use and teach our students about digital technology if we are going to incorporate it into our classrooms.

Week 6 student Blogs

For this weeks assignments, on constructive commenting, I went to check out what Mrs. Kolbert's students were up to. One of the student blog's title caught my attention, so I had to check it out. It was about Discovery Education's website. I am hoping that the student will post the web address. I asked for it in my comment to the student. It sounds like a really cool website and I can't wait to check it out.

For my second student's blog, I chose one titled Mrs. Kolbert's Representative. The title caught my attention also. Had to check it out. I really had to debate about my comment to this student. In her post she talked about how miserable she was in her science class the year before. She also shared that she now loves her new science teacher and science this year.

There were a few grammatical and what looked like typing errors in the post. The last thing on the blog was explaining that her mother had typed it in for her. The purpose of this assignment is to help us develop the skills of constructive (positive) commenting. This means that I am learning myself and could make an error. I don't feel strong in this area or with this skill yet.

The last thing I want to do is post something that might hurt another students feeling or discourage them irregardless of their age. There was just something about this post that left me feeling like this student could really use some extra encouragement. Because of all of this, I chose not to mention anything about the errors, that I noticed when reading her blog. If this results in a loss of points for my assignment this week; then so be it. I would rather lose points that make an error in this commenting.

Week 4 Student constructive comments

This week we are askeds to evaluate 2 of our peers post to get more practice with constructive comments. I chose my 1st one because it was about a video that I liked a lot. It is great to see some one else as excited about teaching as I am.

For my 2nd one I checked out a voice thread project that one of my peers created. I thought the individual did a great job. I learned about being an umpire.

I think these are the hardest assignment to do, so far, in this class. It is so hard and I don't want to say anything bad. I think everyone should be encourage just for completing the assignments. It is hard to put yourself out there on the internet and it takes courage. Everyone get Kudos just for trying.

Have you heard about Digital Citizenship?

We were asked to watch a video from the K12 Online Conference website. The video is called Digiteens: Digital Citizenship by Digital Teenagers. I did some research to see if I could actually get a definition for digital citizenship and realized that was not as easy as going to dictionary.com. I learned that the general consensus is that we need to have and use digital citizenship when using technology; but no one is sure where it should be being taught. I did find one definition, from a website, that seemed to make the most sense. The Society for Technology in Education has defined Digital Citizenship as "students understands human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior".

This video showed different student project that dealt with various Internet etiquette. The one that compared DUI and DWT (driving while texting) statistics in regards to accidents and the loss of human life caught my attention the most. I was shocked to learn that DWT caused more death related accidents than DUI. Almost twice as many than DUI related accidents. I learned a lot from the video.

I did not realize that most of our teenagers and children, that have social networking accounts, have lied about their ages on them. I wanted to check this out for myself, so I had my niece show me her profile on the social network page she uses. We assumed that because it was Christian based that it would be safe. To my surprise, my niece had her age down correct in one spot but in another spot she had that she graduated high school in 1996. Making her much older than 13. I told her we needed to correct it and she told me that we could not. Once you put in the information and save it you can't change it. It was a nice try but thanks to this class I knew how to correct it and we did.

One of the projects talked about the safety of adults and children using the Internet. It was very informative. Most of our children are not aware of any dangers or how to protect themselves from predators and identity theft when it comes to using today's technology. I did not realize that children as young as 9 years old are shopping online. My question is how are they paying for their items and who turns their kids loose on the Internet with their credit cards? This type of situation has resulted in identity left because the kids were not using safe shopping practices.

During my school years, we were taught citizenship in regards to human behavior and interaction. The most advanced pieces of technology were the boom box, VCR, microwave, and color TV. Society set the standard for what was played on the radio, TV, and movies. There was not the need for safety concerns that we face today. The biggest concerns were not to drink, and if you did drink then not to drive, or ride with someone who had been drinking. The other big issue was not to talk to strangers. I grew up in a much safer world than we live in today.

As I have been learning and taking this technology for teachers class, I keep wondering how safe are my students going to be as I incorporate technology into my class some day. I would feel terrible if something we did in class led to my students being preyed upon or even worse hurt. This makes me feel that we all have a responsibility to teach Internet etiquette. This should start in home usage and carry through to the classroom. Before we let our students use technology we should make sure they have the knowledge to do so in a manner that is safe for them and others. I will include digital citizenship lessons in my classroom.

Will it work for every student? Project Learning

This assignment was to watch Project Learning: An Overview. This is a video from the Edutopia website.




As I watched this video, I had one thought that kept coming to my mind. First, let me say that project based learning is a great idea. I love the student's enthusiasm and excitement in the learning that was displayed in this video. Most of the schools, in the video, are private or charter schools. This makes it easier to incorporate this type of learning into their curriculum. They are not under the constraints that the public school system is; which is usually centered around testing scores and PASS skills. I can see where these restrictions would make project learning hard to incorporate into public school systems.

I noticed that most of the project where science and math related. This made me wonder about the other basics that were not showed or discussed. Everything about Project Learning is centered and based around the student/child. They are responsible for their learning. The student chooses the topic/subject and then becomes the director of their learning. It is also the students responsibility to ensure that they are on task and get everything accomplished that they need to.

This type of learning is great if you are self-motivated and a real go getter. Unfortunately, we don't all fit into this category. I am not sure how this will work for all the different types of learners that you have in a classroom. We have students that I worry will be left behind or out in this type of learning environment. We have students who have problems that effect their learning and I am not sure how project learning would work for them. I am old enough that of course we did not have the technology that is out there today. A project, that usually used Popsicle sticks, was building a fort.

I want to work with students that come from low socially economic situations. I worry that this is the group that will be left behind the most. I like the concept of project learning, as a whole. I think this is great for science. For the last 2 years ,my niece has been telling me that she hates science. I found out that she is like me. She does not really hate science. What she hates is the way it is taught. It is so boring to learn science from a textbook only and I agree with her. I hated science until I came back to college. I needed the hands on activities to bring it into focus for me. I love science now and it is because of inquiry based learning. I was terrified in my first science lab class, but I found that I liked it a lot. My niece loves doing labs and experiments but this is not what is being taught in her school's science classes. Her favorite experiment is the burping bottle. I love how her eyes light up when she does an experiment by herself and it works for her. I think that I could incorporate small class projects based in this type of learning, into my classroom.

Making a Baby Blanket

CreativeCommons

Making a Baby Blanket

One of the assignments, for week 4, is to create at "Story in 5 Photos". There are several different stories at this web site. We were to use photos that were copyright friendly. Two of the sites to find these types of image are Compfight and Flickr. The purpose of this assignment it is to introduce visual literacy to us. Here is my story about making a baby blanket.

Digital Nation

Just a quick post to share a new website called Digial Nation Map changing with technology. It is part of the PBS website. This is a great website for everyone.

The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening

For week 3, we have a mini project that uses voice thread that we are to complete. I chose a book written by L. J. Smith. I created my project on voice thread and created a account also. This is a neat way to do a book review or book report. It was a lot of fun creating this project. It was also a lot harder to record my review than I thought it would be. I could not believe how many times I messed up on the audio recording and would have to start over. Instead of telling you about the book, I think I will let you watch it for yourself. :)

Student blogs for Week 3

For this weeks student blogs I chose a classroom web page that I can into contact with through my twitter page Naysangels. This is a Mrs. Kolbert's Class Blog and it is where I did the first student comment. I choose a student website titled Birds of the World. His whole page is dedicated to different species and types of birds. I read the post that talked about the Great Horned Owl. I found one fact very interesting. I thought all birds built their own nest but this is not true. You will have to read his post yourself to find out what the do instead.



For my second student comment I chose a classroom in New Zealand. I learned about this classroom through one of the previous videos we watched for this class. I was amazed by the video and had to check out her classroom blog. I chose to read a story written by a group of students called the Parrot and the Dog. I thought it was a cute story and loved the names for the parrot and dog. You will have to check out the story for yourself.

Stopping Violence in the Education System

One of my assignments for week 3 was to go to 21st Century Global Leadership website. If you have not been you should check it out. These are some amazing student presentation on hard topics. I am passionate about stopping violence in our world, so naturally I choose the presentation what are we doing to stop violence.

What We’Re Doing To Stop The Violence

View more presentations from bgalva010.

I thought the student did a great job presenting their viewpoint. I have never seen any of the footage from Columbine prior to this. There was a link in the presentation to a YouTube
video. As I watched this video, I was remember the television coverage during this incident and thinking about the different responses from the students involved. The one thing that stuck in my mind, was how many students commented that they wished they had felt confident enough to speak up prior to this incident.

The students had seen the signs but had been to scared to approach any of the adults for help. This made me wonder if we have let our children down some how, as a society and in the education field, that they did not feel confident and safe enough to speak up. I question if we should not be doing more to help our students develop their self-esteem. I also question if there is something more we should be doing to help our students have the confidence in us to feel safe enough to talk to us, as educators and role models, about the hard times and tough things they are dealing with. For many people life is not easy, happy, or the best environment it could be and this is growing to included more and more of our students and their families every day. As teachers, we may be the only ray of hope our students have in their lives.

Unfortunately, the reality is we will never know for sure whether this could have been helped or prevented. At the same time, this and other tragedies like it, have opened our eyes to several areas that we should reevaluate and make the necessary changes as they are needed. However, this is just my opinion and I am very passionate about ending domestic and non-domestic violence.

What We’Re Doing To Stop The Violence

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: student viewpoint on violence in our schools

What We’Re Doing To Stop The Violence

View more presentations from bgalva010.

This is a very powerful video. I think I was most impressed with how our children feel about this topic. Some many of our adults want to look the other way, bury their heads in the sand, or pretend it does not exist. I was impressed with the student's approach and their courage to speak out and up about this.

This was also a hard subject for me because I can relate to this on a personal level. I am a survivor of child abuse. I was attacked and held prisoner and terrorized inside my home for two hours a year ago. I am working through this and someday I hope to live without being in fear for my life for the rest of my time here.

I am so passionate about stopping the viloence because it is wrong on some many levels. An individual will spend the rest of their lives living with this. It is extremely hard to deal with an overcome. I feel that it is even worse for our children because they have a hard time understanding what has happened. You can not live through any act of violence and not have your life changed for ever. I have not only had to live through my attack but I have been robbed of a year of my life. I still struggle with it today and still lose on some days. I am even more appauled when our children are in this situation

Luis the tech WIZ

Wow! Yet another amazing young man in the technological world. I have finally made it to week 3's assignments. The only thing wrong with this is I am still a week behind. The Digital Generation Project Youth Portrait for this week is about Luis. Luis is 18 years old and a senior in High School. As always, I am in awe of the technical abilities and skills of the children of today. I think what stuck out the most, after technological awe, was Luis level of commitment. He gets up at 5:30 in the morning to check his e-mail before he starts getting ready to face the day. My alarm starts going off at this time of the morning. However, if I took the time to look at e-mail I would be late for class or work. I would have to get up earlier than that to check mine so it ain't happening any time soon.

Luis gets ready for school and drops off his brother on the way to high school. During school, Luis is involved in 4 advance placement classes and 2 programs having to do with technology. The first program has to do with video production. The second program partners high school students with elementary students. Together the design and create Lego robotics. The high school students are mentors and the help them get ready to enter their creations in competition.

After school, Luis helps in his community and helps his parents interact and use technology like the Internet. He helps his parent pay bills on line and keep track of the family checking account. I remember doing things like this for my grandmother and still do today. I remember teaching her to operate her first cell phone. She had such a hard time remembering the buttons to place calls and end calls. I finally took a marker and colored one green and one red. Stop and go colors made more sense to her.





I love how the subject areas of science, math, media, engineering, and technology are taught with these technological programs. I am not sure how this would fit into the elementary curriculum for a specific grade. However, this has shown me how important it is to continue learning and bringing technology to my future students.

Guess what 5 to 8 year olds are doing in New Zealand?

The more I watch these videos, for this class ,the more I realize the wonderful opportunities that technology provides for teachers and students. I want to go to school in New Zealand. This video is "A peek for a week" in a kiwi junior classroom. I really enjoyed watching this video. Everything these students use, and their teacher, was completely new to me but I liked what I saw. Even if I don't understand it all. LOL

These student's ability to work with and use the technology of today was amazing. That and the fact that they all have morning tea together every day. I don't know why that stuck out to me, but it did. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. With these kids brain power now, I can't image the abilities and IQ's these children will have when they are ready to enter college. This classroom seems like a great learning environment.

One of the topics, that I am supposed to address is how this video and the ideas of this video relate or connect to my life. There is no connection. We did not have classrooms as cool as this when I was a student. Ever technological advance, since televisions came, out has been in my life time. I am not aware of any classrooms in Oklahoma that have these technologies in their rooms. As I watched the video, I kept think how cool this was and how cool that was. I also thought about how I wished we had more classrooms like this here ;because I would have never wanted to go home if I had had this type of learning environment.

I loved the white board that was being used throughout the video. I was blown away by how much these students could interact the white board and computer. I am just now learning how to blog and here there are five year old students posting on their classroom blog. Watching this made me realize how technology challenged I am. I would like to have a white board to use in my classroom when I start teaching. These piece of technology is a great asset for education.

Magical Movie Students

The movie for week 2 was very interesting. I watched Digital Generation Project Youth Portrait: Nafiza. Watching this series just leaves me in awe of our children. They are so amazing and continually teaching me. I have learned so much just from the first two Digital Generation Project Youth Portraits that I have watched.

The video talks about Nafiza and other students making movies. There were two things that stuck out to me as I watched this. One was that these students are making actual movies. The only thing is they are not using cameras or video equiptment. The entire movie is made using the Internet and computer technology. Here I am struglging to keep up with the assignments and blogging site for the technology 4 teachers class and here are these students making movies. The other thing that stuck out to me was how the movies they make are addressing real and serious topic of our world today, such as the situation in Darfur.

We never had anything like this in school when I was younger. I feel like I keep saying this and I do because it is a fact. We would get to watch movie (as a whole school group) at the end of each semester. The movie was played from a movie real and showed on one of the walls in the gym or cafeteria. With this technology we could have made and shown student made movies!

Nafiza gained so much more than just technological knowledge and training. She learned about situations and people from other cultures and places in our world. Nafiza also developed leadership skills. As her skills grew, the other students started coming to her when they needed help. Now they look up to her as a role model. Nafiza also grew in personal development. She gained confidence and strength. Sometimes it is hard to stand up and speak about topics that other people would prefer to not think about. I am not sure how much movie making would fit into a 4th grade class room but I am intrigued by the use of this technology. If they opportunity should arise to incorporate movies into my lesson I would be willing to include it.

TAG your it

I just finished watching Chris Betcher's video on tagging and folksonomies. We are learning about social booking marking in class.








I found the information helpful in understanding tags and how to use them. This is the first video that I have watched, for class, that was hard for me to watch. The video looks like it is out of focus. The picture is not clear and crisp. I found it hard to concentrate on the information being taught and shared. My mind was distracted by the quality of the production. :(



To me, tags are a way to help the searcher narrow down the field or topic they are searching for.
This is new to me. The Britannica Encyclopedia Set (which was bought from a man going door to door) was my best tool, when I was doing research as a child. Ever since the internet has opened the door wider for research; I have had a horrible time finding things on it. I think that tags will help me become better at finding information and more productive at it.

Tags make it easier to find and access information on the internet and websites. I can see where this is a valuable resource to anyone, much less teachers. It will take less time to get to the information you are looking for, which is going to save you time. The time saved can be spent doing other things for my class. Tags will help me use technology in my classroom.

Student Book Review Bloggers

Part of the assignments, for week 2 of technology for teachers, is to learn and practice constructive commenting with social media. The rest of my class is finishing up week 3 or week 4. I am way behind. I love the things that we are learning but for some reason it takes my husband and my self longer than everyone else to complete the tasks. We had the hardest time finding blogs that were actual students. We found all kind of awesome teacher pages but you were not interacting with the students. Interaction was with the teachers. There are some really neat pages out there.

Constructive commenting is a lot harder to do than I thought it would be. I found it hard to do. This is an area that I need improvment in. We were asked to comment on 2 of our t4t peers postings. I think peer posting was actually harder, for me, than the students.

We were also asked to find 2 student blogs to post constructive commentings on. I chose 2 student from the scififiction catagory. If you get a chance you might check out this webpage it is cool. It is student books being reviewed by students. They also have a audio book review.

Is there a connection between Reading and Blogging?

Blogging helps 1st graders improve their literacy skills. I had to watch a video "We Like Our Blogging Buddies: The Write Stuff with Blogging Mentors for my technology 4 teachers.


I learned from this video. I was surprised at the abilities of the first grade students and how much their skills were improved by blogging. Pre-service teachers, from a local college, were paired with first grade students in a Canadian classroom. I was surprised to learn how much the first graders literacy had improved after a year of blogging and interacting with their blogging mentors. All of the students learned three major points from their blogging experience. They learned that every sentence must start with a capital letter and each sentence has to have punctionation. If nothing else, there has to be a period at the end of every sentence.

The video did not mention an area that I felt the students grew in and benefitted from by blogging. Writing skills were also improved. Students went from typing in their thoughts or sentences and then just posted their blog. Working with their blogging buddy taught them to proof read their work before they published their blogs. They learned to correct punctauation and spelling errors. The first grade students loved blogging with their blogging mentors so much that they wanted to do their best on everything they wrote and posted.

Pre-Service college students became, the first graders, motivators and it gave the first grade students an audience for their writings. This, in turn, motivated the first graders to put their best efforts into all of their blogging assignments. A safe place was created for constructive critism. The Pre-Service college students also grew and learned from being a mentor. Their skills at commenting on students blog sites were improved. Both sets of student were able to bond with each other in a manner that gave the first grader's someone to look up to and that cared about them. The Pre-Service college students got a first hand experence with how blogging can improve reading skills; and how important it is to have someone special care about and believe in you.

There were not computers anywhere in the school I attented, so this was not available for teachers to use. All of our feedback came from our teacher. I always had the type of teacher that, I felt, no matter how I tried I could never submitted a writing assignment that was good enough. Every writing assignment was covered with red ink when it was graded and returned to me. Usually this was not done in a positive manner. I think that blogging buddies is a great way to accomplish positive constructive critism.

I did have one concern that came to my mind when watching this video. I worried about the first graders or other students receiving negative feedback from their mentor. I would have to have the commentator on so that I could see every students comments before it showed up on the first grader's page. Words are powereful and can not be taken back. I would want to do my best to make sure my students are not getting negative or hurtful feed back. A child's self-estem and confidence are very fragile. It woud only take on wrong word or hurtful word to cause a child pain.

I am not sure if I want to incorporate this concept into my classroom. It seems like it is a very consumering project and I would feel bad if my students came in touch with someone dangerous. Even with all the progrees we have made to keep the internet safe, for our children, there are still dangers with blogging and internet usuage. I don't want to take the chance that my classroom blogging assignment might or could put one of my students in contact with some that could harm them.

How to link twitter to blog spot

I learned how to do this during lab hours with Wesley this morning. Thanks for asking how to do it because it helped me reinforce what I learned today.

When you login to your blog spot page there are links across the top of your page. Click on the customize link. You should get a page that says add and arrange page. On this page there is a link that says add a gadget. Click on the add a link gadget. On the left side of this page there are links on the left side. Find the link "featured "and click on it. Scroll through the choices until you find the one for twitter that has the blue bird on it. I believe it is the tenth icon and choice. Click on the plus sign and you should be taken back to the Add and Arrange page. This time you should see the twitter link where you had originally click on add a gadget. I then clicked on the twitter link and dragged it to a spot on the right side of my page. When you have done all of this the last step is to click save.

Reading Clubs online

I just had the wonderful experience of attempting to post a constructive comment on a student's blog. I say attempting, because I am not sure that I have chosen the blog correctly and that it is the student's post and not the teacher's post I have commented on. I chose a reading club post.

This was hard for me to do. I know that words can be very powerful while at the same time they can be very harmful also. Keeping this in mind, it made me a little nervous because I didn't want to say anything that might hurt instead of helping.

When students become the teacher

I watched a video for a homework assignment that I would like to share because it made me stop and think about what we (as teachers and future teachers) can learn from our students. I watched Digital Generations Project Youth Portrait: Cameron.





This video reminded me, that teachers and adults in general, have a wonderful asset when it comes to surviving and learning the new technology of the world we live in. Our children are extremely adapt at understanding the technological world. Society tends to forget that our children usually have a better grasp of technology than we do. Cameron's video is a great example of just how adapt they have become and are becoming. It was mind boggling what he is able to do. I was just in awe of his skills. I could not believe all the things he is capable doing while I am still in the Technology for Dummies or Pre-Technology 101 levels. Cameron was able to help some of the teachers at his school have a better understanding of the technology available today that can be integrated into the classroom. I found this part very interesting also.

I loved how Cameron showed his teacher how she could use videos to demonstrate multiplication concepts. Students and teacher learning about and using technology together was appealing to me. I feel that it is important for our students to understand that yes , we are professional but that we are also human. Teachers make mistake just like everyone else and we do not know everything. There are still several things that we can still learn from our students.

I would have loved to have the technologies available today when I was going to school. I would have never wanted to go home. Sometimes I think it would be neat to be in grade school at this time in our history. When I was in grade school, the most advance piece of technology in our classroom was a very old overhead projector. There was not even on computer in the entire building. And no I am not extremely old either!

I will incorporate technology into my classroom on a daily basis. I love the idea of using technology for students homework and/or projects. I also noticed Cameron's body language during this video and liked what I saw. Cameron was very comfortable in front of the camera and the audience. He was confident and had a high level of self-esteem. This is an example of the type of environment I hope to create. Students love to help no matter what. When the situation is helping their teacher learn some new form of technology ,it is even better for them. Their eyes just light up and their self-confidence grows stronger. It is just so cool, to them, to know that they taught their teacher something for a change.

the beginning

I am an educator student and I would like to teach forth grade or fifth. I chose to go back to school, as an older adult, because of my love for children. I believe that our children are the most valuable possessions of the human race. The children of today become the adults of tomorrow and the cycle continues with each new generation. I feel that I can contribute best to our future by investing in our children. Helping a child reach their potential and believe in themselves helps make our future brighter.